“Exponentially,” Luke said.
“I don’t know the word. I’m tired. The important thing is these children are used to eliminate certain people. Sometimes it looks like an accident. Sometimes it looks like suicide. Sometimes like murder. But it’s always the kids. That politician, Mark Berkowitz? That was the kids. Jangi Gafoor, that man who supposedly blew himself up by accident in his bomb-making factory in Kunduz Province two years ago? That was the kids. There have been plenty of others, just in my time at the Institute. You’d say there was no rhyme or reason to any of it—six years ago it was an Argentinian poet who swallowed lye—and there’s none that I can see, but there must be, because the world is still here. I once heard Mrs. Sigsby, she’s the big boss, say that we were like people constantly bailing out a boat that would otherwise sink, and I believe her.”
Maureen once more scrubbed at her eyes, then leaned forward, looking intently into the camera.
“They need a constant supply of children with high BDNF scores, because Back Half uses them up. They have headaches that get worse and worse, and each time they experience the Stasi Lights, or see Dr. Hendricks with his sparkler, they lose more of their essential selves. By the end, when they get sent to Gorky Park—that’s what the staff calls Ward A—they’re like children suffering from dementia or advanced Alzheimer’s disease. It gets worse and worse until they die. It’s usually pneumonia, because they keep Gorky Park cold on purpose. Sometimes it’s like…” She shrugged. “Oh God, like they just forget how to take the next breath. As for getting rid of the bodies, the Institute has a state-of-the-art crematorium.”
“No,” Sheriff Ashworth said softly. “Ah, no.”
“The staff in Back Half works in what they call long swings. That’s a few months on and a few months off. It has to be that way, because the atmosphere is toxic. But because none of the staff has high BDNF scores, the process works slower on them. Some it hardly seems to affect at all.”
She paused for a sip of water.
“There are two docs who work there almost all of the time, and they’re both losing their minds. I know, because I’ve been there. Housekeepers and janitors have shorter swings between Front Half and Back Half. Same with the cafeteria staff. I know this is a lot to take in, and there’s more, but that’s all I can manage now. I have to go, but I have something to show you, Luke. You and whoever might be watching this with you. It’s hard to look at, but I hope you can, because I risked my life to get it.”
She drew in a trembling breath and tried to smile. Luke began to cry, soundlessly at first.
“Luke, helping you escape was the hardest decision of my life, even with death staring me in the face and hell, I have no doubt, on the other side of death. It was hard because now the boat may sink, and that will be my fault. I had to choose between your life and maybe the lives of the billions of people on earth who depend on the Institute’s work without even knowing it. I chose you over all of them, and may God forgive me.”
The screen went blue. Tag reached for the laptop’s keyboard, but Tim grabbed his hand. “Wait.”
There was a line of static, a stutter of sound, and then a new video began. The camera was moving down a corridor with a thick blue carpet on the floor. There was an intermittent rasping noise, and every now and then the picture was interrupted by darkness that came and went like a shutter.
She’s shooting video, Luke thought. Shooting it through a hole or a rip she made in the pocket of her uniform. That rasping noise is cloth rubbing over the mic.
He doubted if cell phones even worked for making calls in the deep woods of northern Maine, but guessed they were absolutely verboten in the Institute just the same, because the cameras would still work. If Maureen had been caught, she wouldn’t have just had her salary docked or lost her job. She really had risked her life. It made the tears come faster. He felt Officer Gullickson—Wendy—put an arm around him. He leaned gratefully against her side, but he kept his eyes on the laptop screen. Here, finally, was Back Half. Here was what he had escaped. Here was where Avery undoubtedly was now, assuming he was still alive.
The camera passed open double doors on the right. Maureen turned briefly, giving the watchers a view of a screening room with maybe two dozen plush seats. A couple of kids were sitting in there.
“Is that girl smoking?” Wendy asked.
“Yes,” Luke said. “I guess they let them have cigarettes in Back Half, too. The girl is one of my friends. Her name is Iris Stanhope. They took her away before I got out. I wonder if she’s still alive? And if she can still think, if she is?”
The camera swiveled back to the corridor. A couple of other kids passed, looking up at Maureen with no appreciable interest before leaving the frame. A caretaker in a red smock appeared. His voice was muffled by the pocket in which Maureen’s phone was hidden, but the words were understandable: he was asking her if she was glad to be back. Maureen asked him if she looked crazy, and he laughed. He said something about coffee, but the cloth of the pocket was rustling loudly, and Luke couldn’t pick it up.
“Is that a pistol he’s wearing?” Sheriff John asked.
“It’s a zap-stick,” Luke said. “You know, a Taser. There’s a dial on them that ramps up the voltage.”
Frank Potter: “You’re shitting me!”
The camera passed another set of open double doors, this time on the left, went two or three dozen steps further, and then stopped at a door that was closed. Printed on it in red was WARD A. In a low voice, Maureen said, “This is Gorky Park.”
Her hand, clad in a blue latex glove, came into the frame. She was holding a key card. Except for the color, bright orange, it looked to Luke like the one he had stolen, but he had an idea that people who worked in Back Half weren’t so careless with these. Maureen pressed it to the electronic square above the doorknob, there was a buzz, and then she opened the door.
Hell was beyond it.
24
Orphan Annie was a baseball fan, and she usually spent warm summer evenings in her tent, listening to the Fireflies, a minor league team out of Columbia. She was happy when one of their players got sent up to the Rumble Ponies, the Double-A franchise in Binghamton, but she was always sorry to lose them. When the game was over, she might sleep a little, then wake and tune to George Allman’s show, and see what was going on in what George called the Wonderful World of Weird.
Tonight, however, she was curious about the boy who had jumped from the train. She decided to drift on over to the sheriff’s station and see if she could find anything out. They probably wouldn’t let her in the front, but sometimes Frankie Potter or Billy Wicklow came out into the alley, where she kept her air mattress and spare supplies, to have a smoke. They might tell her what the kid’s story was if she asked nice. After all, she had cleaned him up and comforted him some, and that gave her a rooting interest.
A path from her tent near the warehouses ran through the woods on the west side of town. When she went to the alley to spend the night on her air mattress (or inside, if it was chilly—they let her do that now, thanks to helping Tim with his go-slow banner), she followed the path as far as the backside of the Gem, the town’s movie theater, where she had seen many interesting movies as a younger (and slightly saner) woman. Ole Gemmie had been closed for the last fifteen years, and the parking lot behind it was a wilderness of weeds and goldenrod. She usually cut through this and went up the old theater’s crumbling brick flank to the sidewalk. The sheriff’s station and the DuPray Mercantile were on the other side of Main Street, with her alley (so she thought of it) running between them.